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Ronald Dumsfeld writes "Wikinews puts together some of the details around the EU's five-year-plan called Project INDECT, and brings attention to a leaked 'sales-pitch' video: 'An unreleased promotional video for INDECT located on YouTube is shown to the right. The simplified example of the system in operation shows a file of documents with a visible INDECT-titled cover stolen from an office and exchanged in a car park. How the police are alerted to the document theft is unclear in the video; as a "threat," it would be the INDECT system's job to predict it. Throughout the video use of CCTV equipment, facial recognition, number plate reading, and aerial surveillance give friend-or-foe information with an overlaid map to authorities. The police proactively use this information to coordinate locating, pursing, and capturing the document recipient. The file of documents is retrieved, and the recipient roughly detained.'"

A report accidentally published on the Internet provides insight into a secretive European Union surveillance project designed to monitor its citizens, as reported by Wikileaks earlier this month. Project INDECT aims to mine data from television, internet traffic, cellphone conversations, p2p file sharing and a range of other sources for crime prevention and threat prediction.

If this doesn't sound like breaking privacy, I dont know what does. And I bet it's UK that is trying to bring this into all EU countries.

Privacy should only be assumed if you control the wires, or if you encrypt the message YOURSELF. To simply say "this is private, you can't listen" is silly.

Maybe so, but there's no way one can build and maintain all of that themself. They would also have to be on their own internets thats only on their own lines. It's just not possible to do that.

Thats *why we have privacy laws in place*. Like any other law, yeah they could be broken by someone. But there will be consequences for the people breaking them. When goverments will remove those laws and actually start breaking them by themself you will have problems. That is what we're trying to prevent here.

Maybe so, but there's no way one can build and maintain all of that themself.

That implies that you think there is some natural right to "private conversations using other people's stuff". I'm sorry, but if you use my telephone in my house, it's my wires and you have as much privacy as I decide to give you. The fact you can't build the infrastructure yourself has no relevance to that.

They would also have to be on their own internets thats only on their own lines. It's just not possible to do that.

While I'll admit that it's stupid to expect radio signals to be "private", there is something inherently wrong with a system where I pay someone to follow me around all day, just to spy on me. Or, in this case, I pay taxes so that the government can mount cameras, and intercept all electronic signals from devices I own, just to spy on me. Tell me again, why do I pay taxes?

Yes "something inherently wrong with a system where I pay someone to follow me around all day, just to spy on me"
Charlie Skelton working for the Guardian found that out when he went to the Bilderberg summit in Greece.

No we have ignorant people or perhaps I should say people who are not cultured, enough to obey those laws. And people like you who assume that simply because it can be done it should be done. While I agree it will be done that doesn't mean that we can't restore civilization and culture by not doing what you claim is physically impossible.

No we have ignorant people or perhaps I should say people who are not cultured, enough to obey those laws.

There are two kind of laws being discussed here. Physical laws, which say that messages sent by radio waves are inherently NOT PRIVATE, and manmade laws which try to contradict physical laws. No amount of culture will let you violate physical laws. No amount of culture will make stupid manmade laws smart.

And people like you who assume that simply because it can be done it should be done.

Yes, we have "privacy laws" that violate the laws of physics in place because of ignorant people having ignorant expectations about what is private. They think "because I want it to be" is sufficient. It isn't. If your cell phone conversation can be picked up by my television set, your "privacy laws" don't mean much (and yes, the old analog cell phones could be picked up on tv sets.)

I think that you're overstating the issue a little here. Listening in on a cell phone conversation generally requires intent and effort. If I have a conversation in a room, the fact that you can overhear me by standing outside with your ear to the door doesn't mean I can't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It is neither unreasonable nor ignorant to assume that your conversation is only heard by yourself, the other party, and the cell phone carrier.

Yes, we have "privacy laws" that violate the laws of physics in place because of ignorant people having ignorant expectations about what is private. They think "because I want it to be" is sufficient. It isn't. If your cell phone conversation can be picked up by my television set, your "privacy laws" don't mean much (and yes, the old analog cell phones could be picked up on tv sets.)

I don't understand your objection to using laws (legal ones) to provide a method for enforcing "social niceties" which violate the laws of physics. I mean, that is pretty much the entire point of having laws in the first place; why would you make a law saying it's illegal to do something that's physically impossible to do? Or are you one of those people who think we shouldn't have a reasonable expectation of being able to walk down a street without being bashed to death by someone who felt like seeing if th

It's also what we like to call "civilized". An expectation of privacy comes from having civilized ourselves enough to NOT listen even though we obviously can. Any one listening to what should be a private call is obviously not civilized. Unless probable cause is present to require a court order to listen. I don't understand why we all seem to have become less civilized lately.

cell phones fair game? Depends if your talking about the towers and tracking or just enjoying an iphone.
Thinks back to Adamo Bove and Costas Tsalikidis.
Adamo Bove was the head of security at Telecom Italia and exposed the CIA (Abu Omar rendition in Italy traced after the fact with mobiles), SISMI ( ~ the Italian CIA) and his own bosses.
He was found under a freeway overpass.
Costas Tsalikidis was a 38-year-old software engineer for Vodaphone in Greece.
He uncovered a highly sophisticated bug embedded in

Seriously, this video plays like a bad science ficition movie... they say "let us monitor everything and we'll magically know when crimes are committed," without saying exactly *how* they plan on sorting through the incredible amount of data and coming up with "crime X being committed right now" in a timely manner.

Not to mention all those darn kids who'll figure out how the system works. Chat rooms would be full of "if you stand on one leg and wave a small red flag at the camera you'll trigger the bomb squad... rotfl, lmas" and so on. Anyhow - I've done a very tiny bit of work in this area - more simulations than spotting criminal intent - kind of the same thing in reverse. Our simulation, if we wanted to scale it up to a realistic scenario, would have taken 32 years to run on a regular desktop. So I'm guessing that

It doesn't matter if the damn thing works or not because eventually it will. The truly frightening thing is the intent behind the initiative. There are people in governments around the world working as hard as they can to bring a computerized "big brother" system to life. Government's power over the individual has increased by orders of magnitude with the advent of things like internet searchable public information. It used to take some leg work to pull paperwork on someone, which acted as a natural brak

"History has shown that if you realize some horrible scenario is possible, writing a dystopian novel to warn people is not a good idea.

Orwell for one, but HG Wells also inspired some very unfortunate developments (including the atomic bomb and bomber aircraft)."

Ehh, not sure about that. I'm pretty sure the first guy to drop a hand grenade out of a WWI fighter cockpit didn't get "inspired" by HG Wells. More likely from dropping rocks into a pond from a bridge to scare the frogs.

No need to be concerned, it's in the interest of public security. Remember, the police are on our side. Not giving them unrestricted access to monitor everyone continuously would only help the bad guys.

See, you don't have it fully down, it's not "bad guys" (because that sounds silly). You have to appeal to fears properly, like this:Not giving them unrestricted access to monitor everyone continuously would only help terrorists, child predators, and unwed teenage mothers.

Ugh... Every time I read this bullshit statement, I die a little inside. Come up with some valid, fact-based, well researched arguments or shut up. You achieve nothing by providing an easily contradicted statement ("1984 was a work of fiction. It's allegory. Nobody is going to create Thought Police or torture you with a rat in a cage. Grow up."). All that happens is the guys you are fighting against get an easy target for their spin.

In a press release dated 18 October, 2009, the World Court announced that "'a video on YouTube' has replaced 'an entry in Wikipedia' as the best source of factual evidence for any legal proceeding meeting NWO standards. Film at 11."

I mean I realize that the video is just a sales pitch. However it bothers me that they never showed someone reporting something missing. The video gave the impression of "He looks suspicious, lets mobilize the cops to pick him up".

Why is it that every single time a government, any government, does something ridiculous like this, people always blame the US and say they'll be getting it next Tuesday? I mean, sure, bash the US, but it's not the US that's got 1 camera for every 14 citizens, and it's not the US that's implementing this wacky scheme.

We aren't all that far away though. There are cameras everywhere here in Eugene. Traffic cams, security cameras, hell, the front of Walmart has 8 or so of these HUGE cameras pointed at various sections of the parking lot. Kinda makes me feel like I am in prison and the cameras are there to protect Walmart from me.

Cuba couldn't afford the surveillance technology. Big government have been mining signals
data for spying and counter spying since the second world war, and that doesn't bother
me much. Its when the legal system/internal security, starts using this massive surveillance
that I feel my privacy slipping away. INDECT sound like another massive government computing
contract that will overrun its budget and fail its supposed purpose.

Osama isn't in Pakistan (or Afghanistan) at all - he's disappeared, or died, or retired to Florida to drink pina-coladas all day, or -
The security forces don't actually WANT to find him, as once they do there's no reason for them to continue in the region: Job done, game over, go home. And then what will they do to keep the contracts flowing to their friends in low places?

Osama isn't in Pakistan (or Afghanistan) at all - he's disappeared, or died, or retired to Florida to drink pina-coladas all day, or -
The security forces don't actually WANT to find him, as once they do there's no reason for them to continue in the region: Job done, game over, go home. And then what will they do to keep the contracts flowing to their friends in low places?

Man, he's been partying it up here in Fort Myers for years. Usually you first see him around time for Spring Break, rolling into town in a caravan of Hummers and Greyhounds loaded with Turkish smoke and more jiggly girls than you can imagine, straight from Mardis Gras in New Orleens.

OBL isn't one for drinking Coladas though... he usually starts with a Margarita or two, then its on to Jack Daniels with coke, winding up with straight Jack (with extra Jack, o

So the solution here is to alter the statistical thresholds by injecting the database with data designed to catch random people's attentions and subject them to additional scrutiny. Maybe create a worm/bot that emulates a web browser and submits queries for words like bomb, president, allah, or whatever they're searching for. Fill their database with crap, and it'll become useless.

I worked a Coop with an employer that did government work and every time I'd leave I would have any printed documents I had on me looked over to make sure I wasn't stealing any information, yet my 4gb flash drive in my pocket, that could have held thousands of times more data than the weight of paper I can carry, was never searched. Even if they saw the flash drive on my key chain I was never questioned.
And if the information in the video was so top secret it effected the security of the common person, w

Depends on how they "prevent theft of data".
You get out with your files?
You spread them over the net
Your corp or gov would go over the logs of the names of x people who prepared a doc of interest in your 4gb liberation.
Templates, style, revisions might show more that antiword or catdoc can hide.
Its down to one person and an electronic trail of when the doc was accessed.match up with id tags, cctv ect and they have an idea. Your isp records are pulled
You might get depressed and be found later...
Your I

Absolutely, so how would this INDECT system help that again? Its not like they would be able to see the USB stick in my pocket and scan the files remotely.
There are plenty of legit ways of tracking IP theft, cameras everywhere is not one of them.

USB stick at home is of no use.
Unless you hold onto it for 25-40 years or so and then gift it to history.
So you would have to chat, email, skype ect about it.
The most important thing is tracing a leak and insuring it gets zero mainstream traction.
With INDECT a new set of words, names and terms could be loaded in, any mention on any known communications system would light up.Like the NSA could always do via ECHELON, but this is internal and faces the EU not Asia, Africa, Mid East, South America, Russia

...security-technophilia, paranoia, directionless data aggregation, and nanny-state politics. Look, I'm all for security, and I hate terrorists, but you can't just throw millions of cameras at the problem, accrue massive amounts of civilian info without having a reason why, a vague and vaporous set of goals, and, to top it off, let a computer define what is or is not a "threat" instead of giving it solid guidelines and clear directives on what to search for. Yeah, that won't cause any problems. I'm honestly

Greetings, Citizen! THE COMPUTER has determined that you may or may not have read a manual that you may or may not have been granted Clarence to read. Please report to the nearest re-education facility at a time most inconvenient to you for mental re-assessment and conditioning. Remember to fill out enrollment form 245A sections 3, 4, and 7-9 (security clearance Orange and above, only) prior to arriving. Send it off for filing immediately or otherwise, your appearance at the facility may be interpreted as a

This nice young politician, Harold Saxon [wikipedia.org], explained to me why it was so important. Said if any terrorists did something horrible, like a UN scientific adviser or a member of a secret government organization went rogue, we could track them and get them before they did something bad.

Nice fellow, that Saxon. I'd vote for him. It's not like he'd use all that power for anything evil, would he?

So this is supposed to prevent crime by scanning the internet and mobile phones and other electronic stuff.

Well, I guess in that case the baddies will have to resort to the old fashioned way of doing badness without all these high-tech toys. Just like they successfully managed to do for hundreds of years. Luckily the EU is only planning on spending 15 million euros on this - over 5 years. So it won't matter very much when they discover the money's been wasted as the criminals go back to holding face-to-fa

At that point writing letters will probably be declared a suspicious activity that indicates you are a terrorists, or all letters will have to identify the sender and recipient, and be scanned by the post office before posting.

If this kind of technology were made available to EVERYONE, there'd probably be a lot less resistance to it. It's the fact that these politicians, corporate entities and governments think they are above other people that, at least, tick *me* off the most.

I am normally against this sort of thing. But I believe to win any argument, you just have to find out how to turn it around on them. Like the Transformers and G.I. Joe said, "Knowing is half the battle!" Once you figure out how to turn it around on them, execution is usually the easy part.

So, I have decided I am for this. But we must use this technology in government and in big business, lest we have another Enron, etc!

Because humans are horribly bad at assessing actual risk. That's why people are afraid of flying, but more people are killed per passenger mile when driving [observer.com]. A plane crash is much more dramatic, and hence, takes hold of people's fears and makes them go WAY out of their way to avoid it, even at the expense of actual safety. Same with the markets, terrorism, and thinking of the children with all our various "war on X" movements.